


radiant falling into themselves

by minarchy



Series: celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention [2]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 00:38:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10399788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minarchy/pseuds/minarchy
Summary: Besides, his life is full, even without the guns and the danger; he has Elena, and they have their archaeology, and that, really, is all that Nate ever wanted. A normal life, skewed in his favour.





	

**Author's Note:**

> follows on from [there are too many souvenirs in your eyes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6841279) but you dont have to have read that first

     _except that there was nobody in this country_  
_except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder_  
_of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love._  
  
_**— Alden Nowlan, Great Things Have Happened**_

 

Sully doesn’t stay. It’s not really into their nature, to linger on in one place; a lifetime of moving, running from job to job, away from one employer and into the arms of another, preferably with better guns, has ingrained the habit deep with him. Nate used to feel the itch, when he first settled into this city. The strangeness of civilian life sat ill on him, like wearing someone else’s skin, like a nag itching between his shoulder blades.

So, Sully doesn’t stay. He and Sam leave after a week, their first job together not something that will wait around; not something that they can sensibly put off, either, the need to figure out how to work together as a team a requirement that won’t sit well with being put on a back burner. They leave, and Nate stays, he and Elena seeing them off in the cold, grey light of early morning. Nate doesn’t mention to Elena the fear that Sully won’t come back, that Sam will be gone again, that he’ll be alone in this strange world that isn’t quite his. She knows, though, just like she always does. He recognises the conversations that they had, before when she would ask him if he was happy, for what they were, now: a chance for him to admit that he can’t be the person he sank himself into, the normal guy with a normal life and a normal wife in a normal house. 

‘Over-steered’ was how Elena had put it. 

Elena wraps her arms around his chest, her chin on his shoulder as he stands in the kitchen, staring at the evidence of the domesticity of the past week: four places at the table, four sets of breakfast dishes sitting in the sink, Sam’s old boots sitting by the door. There are still some of Sully’s clothes folded in the basket on the couch, and he tries to let himself believe that this is a sign that they will return.

Her breath is slow and easy on the bare skin of his neck, and he allows her warmth to soothe him, ground him against his own fears. Damn him, but he doesn’t deserve half of her.

“What’re you thinking?” she says. “Tell me.” 

Nate shakes his head, looking down at where her hands are clasped together over his sternum, thumbs resting in the hollow of his ribcage. “Nah,” he says. “Nothing. You know me.”

“Mmm,” says Elena, her voice playful and non-committal. “Precisely. I can hear your mind going, Nate.”

“Really?” He turns his head, slightly, to catch her eye with the corner of his. “What’s it sound like?”

“You know that noise that a car makes when it’s turning over and doesn’t fire—”

“Hey!” He turns, holding her wrist with one hand and darting his fingers out to catch for her ribs, dancing them along the nerves up towards her armpit. Elena laughs, bright and happy, squirming away from him as he tickles her, stepping on his toes when he grabs her waist to stop her escaping.

“Sully left his socks,” he says, after a moment; Elena’s silence had been expectant without being pushy, in that way she has of getting him to open up. “They’re, uh, they’re still in the basket.”

“See?” she says, smirking and tapping her open palm against his cheek, deliberately condescending. “You know how much he hates losing his clothes.”

 

It’s a strange thing to cling to, Nate knows, the idea that his brother and Sully will come back to him to collect clean laundry and old boots, but he finds himself putting Sully’s clothes into the dresser in the spare room when he’s emptying the basket, pairing the socks and folding his shirts and smoothing them into place against the wood, feeling the idea of permanence in the grain of the fabric. Elena puts Sam’s boots on the shoe rack by the door, and the sight of them spreads warmth through him like a promise.

 

Elena’s right, of course. It would rankle at him, especially when she catches his eye with that smug smile that is all in the creasing of the skin and the curve of her cheek, but he finds himself grinning back at her over the noise of Sam and Sully bickering at each other.

“You guys do this the whole time,” says Nate, “or did you actually get around to doing — whatever it was that you were doing?”

“Hey,” says Sam, spreading his arms and tilting his chin at Nate in an expression that slams him right back to childhood, “we’re professionals, we got the job done. What d’you take us for?”

“An old man and an idiot who left his boots behind?” says Nate, ducking as Sam swipes at his head.

“Less of the old man,” says Sully, his moustache twitching, “if you don’t mind.”

“Aww, come on,” says Nate, whilst Sam mutters something that sounds like, “that’s what she said,” and Elena clips the back of his neck with the dish towel.

“I think it’s sweet,” she says, turning an all-teeth smile on Sam as he rubs the smarting skin, “Nate passing the torch to you.”

Sam laughs, his head thrown back, and wraps an arm around Nate’s neck as he protests, grinding his knuckles into Nate’s scalp. 

“So,” says Elena, passing Sully a beer and taking a seat on the counter next to where he’s leaning, the fabric of her socks making soft breaths against Sully’s jeans as she swings her feet, “how was it? Working with Sam.” They watch the brothers wrestle in the space between the table and the couch, fighting in the way that brothers do, all long limbs and pulled punches.

“Eh,” says Sully. “Not so bad. He’s got all of Nate’s rough edges without the experience, and he’s a little too trigger happy for my sense of self-preservation.”

“But not so bad,” says Elena.

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” says Sully. “I’ll tell you what; Sam doesn’t attract half the trouble the Nate always managed.”

Elena snorts and tilts her bottle towards Sully in a toast, basking in the happy sounds of Sam sitting on Nate’s chest, glorious in victory.

 

Winter folds across the city like a wave, the river breathing fog over its banks, cold creeping in like a thief in the night to curl frost over the edges of window panes and crisp the dew on the lawn. It chills the air in the bedroom where Nate and Sully and Elena are all curled up in the double bed, not quite enough space; their shared body heat a cocoon beneath the coverlet. Sam was going to take the couch, citing Sully’s grey whiskers as reason enough that he should take the bed in the spare; but Elena had insisted, her fingers an unbreakable force on Sully’s wrist where she rests them, the pressure of her touch insistent and barely-there.

“You know what?” Sam had said, crooking an eyebrow at the three of them. “I don’t even wanna know.”

“Sam,” Nate had said, “it’s not—” whilst Sully had harrumphed uncomfortably, shifting his weight, but Sam had held up his hands, palms forward, his eyes a laugh.

“Each to their own, man,” he’d said. “Whatever makes you happy.” He’d disappeared up the stairs before Nate could say anything else, to try and explain, his parting remark of “be safe, Nathan!” sending heat crawling up the back of Nate’s neck and Elena’s laughter curling up in his wake.

This is how Nate finds them, waking easy in the half light to the warmth of them, skin and skin beneath the fabric. Sully sleeps as he always has, a man too used to small bunks and bedrolls, on his back with his limbs held in; Elena’s arm is draped over his chest, her knuckles resting against the skin of Nate’s side, his t-shirt rucked up during the night. He can feel her toes against his calves, knows she has them splayed across the bed beneath the covers, taking up space; her face is relaxed in sleep, half-visible from where it’s pressed into the pillow, creases leaving red marks on her skin that he’ll smooth away with his thumb when she wakes.

“You got a thing for watching people sleep?” says Sully, his voice soft and deep from just waking, rolling out from his chest. Nate smiles, feels it spread across his face without abandon.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says, his voice pitched quiet to match, unwilling to break the stillness of the house, careful not to wake Elena. “Sleep well?”

“Mmm,” says Sully, “‘til your staring woke me.”

“Can’t blame me for that,” says Nate, complete unashamed. “You’re just too damn pretty.”

“Well,” says Sully, “that’s true enough,” and Nate has to kiss him, a gentle press of lips against Sully’s, chaste and happy.

Elena’s fingers are smoothing against Nate’s side, the cool metal of her wedding ring brushing against him, and when he looks down at her, her eyes are open and creased with happiness, the side of her face he can see full of a smile, sleep-lax and beautiful.

“Hey, darlin’,” says Sully, following Nate’s gaze. “You’re awake.”

Still smiling, Elena rubs her face into the pillow and hooks her foot around Nate’s calf, pulling his leg closer and tangling their ankles together; she shuffles herself further onto Sully, tucking her head against his shoulder. Nate, unbalanced by her, finds himself on his side, his head next to Sully’s on the pillow.

“Why’m I the mattress,” Sully grouses, but Nate can hear the fondness weighing his words like honey, the way his hand rests on Elena’s back and his arm shifts to accommodate Nate beside him belying his tone.

“‘S you’re comfy,” Elena says, her voice muffled and her eyes closed, smile still curving her cheek. Nate touches his forehead to the line of Sully’s cheekbone where it meets his ear, breathing a smile against the warm skin of Sully’s neck, and closes his eyes.

 

“‘S all the hair,” Elena says, a minute or an hour later, and Nate, who had been drifting in the warm, soft edges of sleep, is startled into ungainly laughter.

 

It’s not quite cold enough for snow; Nate still catches himself thinking yet, after growing up in Boston and waiting for snow to close school and let him and Sam out into the street to pummel the neighbourhood kids in snowball fights, and later dreading the bite at his skin and the numbness in his limbs, then later still, thanking the clean white for erasing his trail. His relationship with snow is complicated.

Still, he’s grateful that the air is only cold enough to plume their breath as he and Sam trudge through the streets, hands shoved into coat pockets.

“I can’t believe you didn’t think she’d notice,” Nate says.

“Ah, shut up,” says Sam. “You’re only saying that because you know I was winning.”

“Oh, _please_ ,” says Nate, scathingly, “there is _no_ historical evidence for there being any sort of mutually understood law amongst thieves.”

“Not _everything_ is historical accuracy, Nathan—”

“Oh, no,” says Nate. “No, I am not getting into this again, Sam. Pretty sure all your whining is aggravating my tinnitus.”

Sam huffs a laugh, a great cloud of vapour shrouding his face for a moment. “You feeling your age, little brother? Guess the treasure hunter life isn’t all glamour and girls, huh.”

Nate shoves him. “I’d like to see your knees survive falling off as much shit as I have.”

“Your knees were lost cause long before I bit it. Besides,” says Sam, “ _I_ don’t fall off shit half as much as you do.” 

“And who was it that taught me how to climb?”

“You can’t blame the teacher for the student’s faults.” Sam lifts his chin, affecting a superior expression that is spoiled only slightly by the laughing look that he casts sideways at Nate. “Hey,” he says, then, “hey, is that a basketball court?”

It actually is; Nate had forgotten that it was here, a square of concrete and fencing next to the kiddie play area, somewhere for the teenagers to go. Coming in this direction hadn’t even been his plan, after Elena had kicked them both out of the house (“you know what,” she’d said, “I’m happy for the two of you, really, I am, but if you don’t both just _fuck off right now_ so I can get my work done I swear, I will skin the pair of you,” and, okay, maybe getting into an argument about the legitimacy of there being an actual, physical, written pirates’ code had been a bad idea) but when he sees the grin on Sam’s face, the challenge in his eye, he wonders if it had been, somewhere at the back of his mind.

“Come on, Sam,” he says. “You just got shot, what, three weeks ago? You don’t wanna have a defeat that messy.”

“Oho, boy, them’s fighting words!” Sam dances into the court, shouldering open the gate and raising his hands to Nate in the classic ‘bring it on’ pose. “What’s the matter, little brother, you afraid to get your ass handed to you?”

“Hey, I was just looking out for you,” says Nate, laughing. “I don’t know if there’s anything holding you up apart from your ego.”

“Come on, then,” says Sam, picking up the ball from where it was left next to one of the posts, “put your money where your mouth is.”

 

“Hey,” says Nate, resting his hand on Elena’s shoulder, “you get your work done?”

It’s late. Sam and Sully are gone, again, but this time not too far; Sam still chafing from staying still, too many years in a cell wearing him thin, Sully off to make ‘social visits’, which might be catching up with old friends in a dive bar, getting drunk off his ass, or might be hitting up contacts in the better part of town. Nate still can’t tell, sometimes.

Elena sighs, pushing her hair back from her face. “Pretty much, yeah,” she says. “Why; you want something?”

“Nah,” Nate says, smiling at her, lopsided, feeling something like anxiety bloom in his chest. “I didn’t want to be disturbing you, you know, again. And, uh, sorry for earlier. I know that me and Sam were getting rowdy, I just—”

“Mm hmm,” says Elena, looking up at him with a shrewd eye. “It’s okay. And,” she says, after a pause, “you don’t have to creep about on eggshells, you know. I’m not going to leave.” Nate catches himself flinching, tries to stop the motion before it becomes anything, but he knows that Elena caught it. “Hey,” she says. “We got our shit. We’re working through it. That’s what marriage _is_ , Nate. This is how it works. But, you know. We’re good.”

“Yeah,” says Nate. “Yeah, I—” He sighs, a long exhale. “I love you,” he says. “I still don’t get how you put up with me, after all this time.”

“Three years of marriage isn’t all that long, cowboy.” Elena pushes herself out of her chair, cups her hands around the back of Nate’s skull. “I’m in it for the long haul.”

 

It’s November. Nate has been scraping frost from his car window for three weeks now, the dirt of the yard ice-hard beneath his boots. The sun disappeared over the horizon a good two hours ago, and the night is lit by the fluorescence of the street lamps, colouring everything harsh and sulphur yellow; he is tired, and he hates paperwork, and he cannot wait to get home.

“Hey,” says Elena, when he stomps inside. She’s standing in the kitchen, pulling something from the oven that fills the house with the smell of onions and garlic and tomato.

“Close the goddamn door,” says Sully, lounging on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table. “You’re letting all the cold air in.”

Laughing, Nate obliges, feeling his chest open and swell as he shakes off the day behind his desk with the removal of his coat. “You need a blanket there, Sully?” he says, his voice teasing. 

“It’s almost your birthday,” says Elena, throwing a smile at Nate over her shoulder as she puts the hash on the counter. “If you like, we could get you some slippers?”

“Bunny ones?” says Nate, talking to Elena now, basking in the indignant sounds that Sully is making, letting them swirl around him with the dust motes, settle against his skin. “Or those tartan ones that grandpas always seem to be wearing.”

“Moccasins,” says Elena. “I think Sully could pull off a moccasin slipper.”

“I am not a grandpa!” says Sully, loudly, twisted around on the sofa to glare at the pair of them. His expression changes, suddenly, his gaze sharpening and darting between them. “Unless there’s something you two are trying to tell me?”

“Oh, God, no,” says Nate, before blinking and turning to Elena, his eyes widening and something slightly left of terrified washing across his face. “I mean, there isn’t, right?” 

Elena bursts out laughing. “No,” she says, her expression so fond it borders on patronising. “No, Sully, I don’t think we’re quite ready for that yet.”

“No shit,” says Sully, eyeing Nate. “You wanna sit down, kid?”

Nate does, resting on the arm of the sofa. “Jesus,” he says. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“I thought you wanted kids.” Elena has left the kitchen, the hash steaming on the counter and is watching him, carefully.

“No,” says Nate, “I mean, yeah, I do, I just, I thought I’d maybe, you know,” he waves an arm, “know about it first, or something. Whoa.” He leans forward, hands braced on his thighs. Elena laughs; Sully’s chuckling vibrating through the couch to where Nate is sitting. She puts her hands on his face, and tilts him up to meet her gaze.

“I promise,” she says, “if I am pregnant, you will be the first person I tell. And,” she adds, “I’ll do it in very small words.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” says Nate, and she grins, and kisses him.

“Come on, now.” Elena lets him go, and heads back into the kitchen, swiping at Sully’s arm as she passes. “Food’s getting cold.”

It’s November, and the cold is pressing at the house on the outside but it can’t touch them here, stomachs full of hot food and beer and sitting together, the three of them on the couch, watching terrible television. Elena curls into Sully’s side, her head pillowed on the curve of his chest, his arm thrown over her shoulder. Nate takes the other side of the sofa, letting his legs stretch out in front of him, feeling the contentment of the well-fed flow through him as Elena tucks her feet into his lap, his hand resting on her ankle. The three of them together, these people that he loves. Nate feels like a fire, banked low, glowing.

Elena falls asleep like that, lulled by the flickering glow of the television screen and the steady rise and fall of Sully’s chest. Nate catches Sully’s eye across the curve of her, and smiles.

 

Sully doesn’t stay, and neither does Sam, their lives on tarmac and in transit, so they leave and they leave and they leave. Nate had thought that it would hurt, watching them go time after time, after spending so much of his life living the same way, always on the go, always looking for the next score. It was a life that defined him in so many ways, and shaped him as a person; but he’s not that kid any more. He doesn’t have anything to prove.

Besides, his life is full, even without the guns and the danger; he has Elena, and they have their archaeology, and that, really, is all that Nate ever wanted. A normal life, skewed in his favour.

They always come back, though, something Nate has little experience with; they come back without prompting and without invitation, turning up in his office and his kitchen without waiting to be let in. He starts to realise what Elena had pegged years ago, that when something that cannot stay still returns to you time after time, it isn’t really leaving. And in that sense, they stay, and stay, and stay.

 

“Look at this fucking asshole,” Sam is saying, his voice filtering up through the floorboards to where Nate is sitting in Elena’s office, borrowing her desk and her laptop after he spilt coffee over his. He hadn’t even heard Sam arrive, but, honestly, he should be used to that by now.

“What’s going on?” he says, padding down the stairs in his socks and seeing Sully lounging against the bannister on the ground floor. Sully looks up at him and smiles a greeting.

“We got a hitchhiker,” he says. “Somewhere out of Puerto Rico.”

“But, I mean, just look at him!” Sam sounds exultant, his face split in a smile that he normally reserves for conspiracy theories, and he has a cat in his arms. “This little shit—” Elena is laughing at him and trying not to, her shoulders shaking and her hand partially covering her mouth, “we were flying away, right, getting shot—”

“Same old, same old,” says Nate.

“Yeah, anyway,” says Sam, “and they’re all, like, guns blazing, fire everywhere, Sully swearing a blue streak—”

“They were shooting at my plane!” 

“And this little guy: just chilling, no worries, cleaning himself like he’s got all the time in the world.” Sam beams at the cat. “I love him.”

Nate starts to laugh, and sees the amusement fight to escape from behind Sully’s folded arms and twitching moustache. “Sam,” Sully says. “I am not having a goddamn cat on my plane. I don’t have rats, and he’s too old for you to train it to pick locks.” Something guilty flashes across Sam’s face, proving that he had, in fact, been entertained thoughts of a very similar nature.

“Aww,” says Elena, “you can’t just dump him.” She takes the cat from Sam’s arms and holds it up to her face. “He’s got a wise face,” she says sagely.

“Something that comes with age,” says Sully.

“Maybe we should call him Victor,” says Elena, her eyes wicked when she looks at Sully, her grin razor sharp.

“Oh my God,” says Sam, “no, though, this cat, right, he just looks at me — we’re about three seconds away from spiralling to a fiery death, hand to God—”

“That’s a filthy lie,” says Sully. Sam ignores him.

“—and he just looks at me, right, like: ‘is it always this way with you two?’” Sam throws his hands out towards the cat, now curled happily against Elena’s chest. “I mean!”

“Oh my God,” says Nate, his laughter punching out of him like a shotgun, “oh my god, we have to call him Jeff.”

Sam blinks at him, confused at the break in his ode to cat, whilst Sully throws him an unimpressed look. “Who’s Jeff?”

“My cameraman,” says Elena, her voice thoughtful as she looks down at the cat, now purring, one of his back legs hanging loose outside the clutch of her arms. “He died in Shambhala.” Nate winces, his amusement dampened by realisation that he had, maybe, been a bit of a dick to bring that up.

“I don’t get it,” says Sam. “What’s this Jeff got to do with the cat?”

Elena runs her thumb over the fur between the cat’s ears. “It’s funny,” she says, “Because he said that same exact thing about Nate, when he first met him.”

“What,” says Sam, “'what does Nate have to do with a cat’?”

“No,” says Elena, throwing him an amused look, “he said, ‘is it always this way with him?’ and I said yes, and he just sorta,” Elena shrugs one shoulder, “took it in his stride.”

“The most laid back guy I ever met,” says Nate. He looks down. "Brave son of a bitch, too."

“Hmm,” says Elena, stroking the cat, lost in her thoughts; Nate thinks she’s probably remembering the day that Jeff died, of Nate carrying Jeff through the temples, of Lazarević shooting him point blank. He is surprised, then, when Elena says, grinning, “he pinned Nate to the ground.”

“Oh, now, hang on,” says Nate, holding his hands up to ward off the insult, “that’s not fair; he caught me by surprise!”

“He pinned you,” says Elena, still grinning. “I had to tell him to let you go.”

“Well,” says Sam, laughing, “I guess that settles it.” He lowers his face to eye level with the cat, now Jeff. “Hi Jeff. You keep that brother of mine in line, you hear? Seems you got some big shoes to fill.”

“I’m regretting this already,” says Nate.

 

Jeff sleeps a lot. Nate isn’t entirely sure what he was expecting from a cat of advanced years (the vet hasn’t been able to give them any solid age for him, when they took him in to get him chipped and dewormed), but he had been hoping for, well, _something_.

“He’s a cat, Nate,” Elena says, when she catches him rolling a balled up sock around on the floor in front of Jeff’s nose. Jeff’s eyes are closed, and Nate isn't even garnering a tail flick by way of response. 

“I thought cats chased shit,” Nate says, scowling at Jeff’s perfectly unperturbed aura, his tail curled around his feet, his nose barely a centimetre from the sock. “Like string and fake mice and stuff.”

“Well, yes,” Elena says, “but Jeff’s _old_ , Nate. All he’s gonna do is eat and sleep and stretch.”

“Lucky fucker,” Nate mutters. Elena hears him anyway, and laughs.

“Besides,” she says, “you can hardly blame him for not wanting to get his paws all stunk up on your gross socks.”

It’s December, and the light that filters through the windows is grey with the heavy cloud outside, thick with the snow that is both a promise and a memory; inside, the house is warm from the radiators and Elena’s laughter from the sofa as Nate insists that the sock is clean, kettle singing down from where she has taken it off the stove. As the sounds of the television and their bickering fills the room, neither of them notice when Jeff stretches, curls up again, and starts to purr.

 

By some strange form of miracle, Chloe arrives on the one day that the roads are reasonably clear, the ploughs and the grit finally paying off with a layer of grey slush that sits in heaps in the gutters. The snow has been pretty much constant since the end of November, and Nate has spent many frozen mornings shovelling out the driveway, cursing his grip as his fingers freeze inside the gloves that Elena insists he wear, citing his aging joints, cartilage abused and broken, silencing his protests.

“The universe knows not to get in the way of girls’ night,” is all she says, flicking her dark hair over her shoulder. “When did you guys get a cat?”

Nate loves Chloe, but he knows his place; this is girls’ night, something that Elena doesn't get very often and her first ever where she has a chance to reminisce about their time on the wrong side of the law. It had been Sully’s suggestion, quiet in Nate’s ear one evening, and when he had received a text with Chloe’s number and a pointed remark that she was expecting his call, Nate had been the one to invite her over; he isn’t going to get in the way. He tidies the kitchen whilst Chloe and Elena lounge in the sitting room, sipping beer and laughing.

“I think I gotta get myself a husband,” Chloe says, leering at Nate over the back of the couch. Elena chokes on her mouthful of beer. “Just, you know,” Chloe says, waving the hand holding the bottle, the wide end of it tracing a circle in the air behind the couch, her eyes still on Nate’s ass, “to help around the house, and around,” she throws a filthy look at Elena, “the _house_ , if you catch my meaning.”

Elena laughs, and Nate glances back over his shoulder at the two of them. “You want me to pose for you, honey?” he says, tilting his hips and pouting over his shoulder at them, holding down his smirk as Elena throws her head back and Chloe fumbles in her bra, pulling out a wad of bills and flicking them at him one by one.

“Yeah, baby,” Chloe says, the paper fluttering to the floorboards like ticker tape as Nate bats his eyelashes at them, overly coy, “just like that, come on.”

 

“You sure you’re gonna be alright by yourself?” Elena says, one hand on Nate’s arm as she pulls on her other shoe, her eyes, blue and beautiful as the sky, concerned where they rest on his. 

“Don’t worry,” Nate says, pressing his lips against her cheek, careful of her lipstick. “It’ll be me and Jeff for boys’ night in.”

“They’re gonna sit in their underwear and stare listlessly at the TV,” Chloe says, rearranging what looks like a Colt semi automatic in her purse. “Trust me, you don’t want to be around to witness that. Well,” she amends, “you might — you married him, after all.”

Elena laughs, and presses her mouth to Nate’s, leaving him with the taste of wax on his lips and the scent of her perfume wafting through the room.

“So,” he says, looking down at where Jeff is lying on the sofa, legs stretched out in front of him. “What d’you want to do?”

Jeff looks at him for a long moment, and then twists himself to lick between his legs.

“Nope,” says Nate, dropping down next to him, and flicks on the TV, trying to pretend that the house doesn’t feel empty around him.

 

He is rudely awoken by the sounds of Chloe and Elena stumbling in through the front door, clearly trying to be quiet and failing miserably, their shoes too loud on the wood floor and their stifled laughter too loud in the quiet room. His neck aches from where it has been overextended against the back of the sofa, and his bladder is reminding him that he is going to need to piss soon, but Jeff is a warm weight in his lap, his breathing a smooth, easy rise pushing against his stomach, and he allows the women the easy lie of his sleep.

It’s obvious when they spot him, because their shushing becomes somehow both more pronounced and more successful.

“I’m gonna head to bed,” he hears Chloe say, imagines her standing with her hand on one hip, eyebrow raised at his slumped form.

“Up the stairs, at the end of the corridor,” Elena whispers back, and there is the sound of her feet on the stair tread. “Hey,” Elena says, her voice much closer, her breath sweet with whiskey sours, “hey, Nate.” She kisses his temple, and Nate allows his eyes to open, appropriately groggy, as though only just rousing from sleep.

“Hey,” he says, and smiles. Elena’s hair is falling into his face from where she is bent over above him, her face upside down, her eyes level with his. “You have fun.”

“We did,” she says, her cold fingers cupping the line of his jaw. “And we didn’t even have to steal anything.”

“Wow.” Nate doesn’t have to fake his surprise, though his tone is tempered by the intimacy of the moment. “That’s definitely one for the scrapbook.”

Elena laughs, low and soft, her breath warm on his face as her fingers pinch the thin skin under his chin in rebuke. “I’m heading to bed,” she says. “You coming, or have you claimed the couch from Jeff?”

“Jeff seems to have claimed me,” Nate says, gesturing to where the large mound of cat is still happily curled up on his thighs.

“It’s so nice to see my boys getting along,” Elena says, and kisses the bridge of his nose. “I’ll see you up there when you manage to escape.”

 

Chloe stays for maybe a week, the days folding over one another; the harbour has frozen over so company has closed down for the season, Nate sending everyone home a whole week early because of the weather, hiding the lost week’s pay inside the cards passed around when they log in their last time cards.

“You’re so good to them,” Elena says when he tells her, her arms wrapped around his shoulders as he frowns at the tiny, scrawling handwriting in the accounts book.

“They work hard,” Nate says, almost absently, wishing that he had got around to getting all the accounts logged onto the new software he had bought after taking over. “They deserve it; and it’s not their fault the weather’s a bitch.”

Elena presses her lips to the place where his ear meets his jaw, and he turns his face into it, feeling the familiar planes of her face against his cheek. “I got a call from Sully this morning,” she says, her voice low quiet and easy in the small space of the office, her breath warm in the cold air. 

“Mm?” Nate says, a distracted but querying hum, frowning at the page. “He gloating about the sun in— wherever it was they went?”

“Madagascar,” Elena provides, and he can feel the curl of her smile against his cheek. “And no; he wanted to let us know that they’ll be back in town by tomorrow, and then he talked around wanting to stay for the holidays for a good five minutes.” Nate laughs, imagining Elena leaning her hip against the counter and letting Sully talk himself in circles in the hope that she would put him out of his misery, knowing that she wouldn’t. “Chloe said she’d stay ‘til they got here, so she could say hi to Sully.”

This rouses Nate from his daze of concentration; he leans back into her embrace, letting one hand fall from the desk to rest in his lap whilst the other presses firm at the corners of his eyes, feeling the pressure of the overtaxed muscles working its way across his forehead, praying Elena won’t notice and make more sly comments about how he needs to get reading glasses if he is going to spend so much of his time squinting.

“I’m not sure how happy I am about Sam and Chloe meeting,” he says.

“Really?” Elena sounds genuinely surprised. “I think they’ll get along like a house on fire.”

“Exactly,” Nate grouses. “And it’ll be my house that’s burning.”

“Should I be concerned about you wanting to keep Chloe away from Sam?” Elena says, her amusement heavy in her tone. “Considering your _history_.”

“That’s exactly _why_ I want to keep them apart,” Nate says, feeling his doom looming down upon him. “Oh my god, they’re going to take turns sharing embarrassing stories about me.”

“You’ll never live it down,” Elena agrees, comfortingly.

 

It’s just as bad as Nate feared. 

 

Christmas swings into the household with its customary zeal, which translates to Nate and Sam making a confused attempt at decorating by draping tinsel around doorways and barely balancing an extremely ornate, solid gold eight pointed star on top of the plastic tree that Elena dug out of the attic.

“I’ve seen more decorative flare in prisons,” Sully says, from his position in the armchair, feet propped on the coffee table. Sam flips him off over his shoulder without turning around, one hand still just supporting the star, a featherlight touch ready to catch it in case it over balances again. When it stays upright, he spreads his arms wide, turning around in triumph, just missing Elena cuff Sully over the back of the head for mentioning prison when it’s Sam’s first Christmas in fifteen years, but in time to see her knock his boots off her coffee table.

“Eat your words, old man,” he says, dropping his hands to his hips and tilting his chin up, and then says, “what?” when Elena lets out a startled laugh.

“Nothing, nothing,” she says, waving her hand as if to brush away the beginnings of offense building in Sam’s eyes. “You just look so much like Nate when you do that.” Nate can’t hide his smile at that, feeling his chest swell and tighten with warmth at the recognised familiarity between them, the sweet weight of it increasing when Elena reaches out and puts her hand on Sam’s forearm, saying, “it looks wonderful, Sam, thank you. A very Drake tree.”

Sam beams, a look of surprisingly honest pleasure on his face at the compliment, and Nate feels a pang of memory, all the poor Christmasses they spent together, just the two of them, paper streamers and bottle cap decorations and stolen gifts wrapped with used newspaper, and a pang of loss for all the years they never had, a lifetime between them. Sully mutters something into his beer, and Elena prods him with her toe as she drops down next to Nate, her side pressed against his where they fit together, her long leg extended over his lap to reach Sully’s thigh.

“If you don’t help,” she says, “you can’t complain. And you’ll have to wear the Santa hat.”

“Is that right?” Sully says, his moustache twitching as his eyes glint with amusement.

“House rule,” Nate confirms; “you don’t want to risk the Santa hat of shame,” and hides his smile in his cup when Sam sits on Elena’s other side and she drapes her arm around his shoulder, claiming him as part of the household with a single gesture, solidifying his place amongst them, something that Nate knows that Sam still feels uncertain about, despite his best efforts. Sure enough, he glances over at Nate, his expression slightly wrong-footed at the unexpected ease of the physical affection, but Nate just tilts his smile at him. He catches the look in Sully’s eyes when he turns his attention back to the television, and feels the heavy, comforting weight of these people, his family, filling the space with the threads of their lives, tangling together inextricably. 

 

“You got anything special you want for Christmas, Sam?” Elena says, after maybe an hour of comfortable silence between them filled with television sounds. She is still tucked between Nate and Sam, Nate’s arm draped across her shoulders and her hands on her stomach, fingers laced together. “What with it being your first since getting out?”

Nate glances over at his brother, sees the way he doesn’t take his eyes off the television when he replies, the reflection flickering in sharp counterpoint to how his expression doesn’t move, and feels a cold, unpleasant sting beneath his breastbone, like a foreshadowing of imminent pain.

“Nah,” Sam says. “Figured I’d take off somewhere for a few days, you know; find some lonely hearts looking for some seasonal cheer.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Elena, and Nate feels the sting morph into something that is ominously close to panic, a tight knot at the top of his stomach as he sees his brother try to withdraw from them again, a promise of pain, “why wouldn’t you spend it here?”

“You guys don’t want me around for the holidays,” Sam says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I ain’t all that good at this whole — _domestic_ thing you got going on,” he waves a hand, the circle encompassing the three of them as though they are a separate entity all of their own, and Nate feels horribly torn by guilt, the idea that the _thing_ that he has between Sully and Elena is sidelining Sam, pushing him out of their slipstream.

“You heard the lady,” Sully says, his voice very calm, his gaze fixed on Sam. “There’s no room for the goddamn Drake martyr complex at Christmas.” 

Or ever, Nate wants to say, or maybe please, but his throat is too tight and his mouth too dry, and all he can do is raise his hand to grip at Sam’s shoulder, his fingers tight as though he can hold Sam in place, or perhaps to hide the tremble he can feel lurking just over the horizon. Sam glances over at him, his expression a little startled, and Nate can feel that his eyes are overbright where their gazes meet.

“A little bit stronger than I put it,” Elena says, her voice edged with easy laughter, and Nate tries to cling to the way that she is still perfectly relaxed, the way that Sully is still leisurely and calm as evidence that the home he has been trying so hard to hold on to these past few months is not about to fall apart around him. He has the horrific premonition that, if Sam is allowed to leave, he won’t come back. 

“But I guess pretty much the point I was making,” Elena continues, and turns her head to look at Sam, one hand moving to rest lightly on his arm. “Where else could we possibly want you, but here?” she says, and Nate sees something shocked and pleased break free behind Sam’s expression. “After all, Christmas is for family.”

Sam stares at her for a long moment before looking between Nate and Sully, as though seeking further validation. Whatever he is looking for, Nate guesses that he finds it, because he smiles, small and genuine.

“Well, then,” he says, and Nate feels his chest loosen. “Guess I’m staying.”


End file.
